Last on the Card

Last on the Card: the Four for the Price of One Edition

The sight of the area round the ponds in our village these days tends to make most of us who live here grumpy, and to sound like fully paid members of Reform UK, the anti-immigrant political party responsible for normalising racism.

It’s Greylag Geese, wherever you look. As you can see.

Each pair of devoted geese (and I have to hand it them, they’re excellent and solicitous parents) has a brood of about nine. They spend much of their time terrorising the other water birds, who have largely done a bunk: or alternatively crossing the main road that bisects the village. This brings cars, bin lorries, the local bus to a halt in both directions as each mother leads her brood slowly across the road, while father brings up the rear. One brood may follow another. Then another brood, from the opposite side may decide to return. I wasn’t quick enough on the draw with this shot. The action is almost over.

This photo was taken a couple of weeks ago. Astonishingly, only we were held up on this occasion.

It’s not just ducks and moorhens who are terrorised. We are not welcome either.

They only discovered our ponds about three years ago. But every year, last year’s babies return to the place of their birth, and every year, the problem gets worse. Back home, as we clean from our shoes the excrement which the geese deposit in plentiful piles on the pavements, we can be heard to mutter: ‘B***** immigrants, terrorising our ducks and murdering our ducklings. Why can’t they just go back where they came from?‘

Well, that’s not a happy note to end on. So instead, glance back to the header shot. That’s truly the last shot on my camera for May: the sunset from our bedroom window.

For Brian’s Last on the Card.

May Day Morning

Apologies for two posts in one day, but I wanted to share this morning’s May Day sunrise, at 05.30 at Studley Royal.

I tried a shot yesterday, but it didn’t work out, so I’m not prepared to share it with Brian as my Last on the Card for April. Let’s call it my Almost First on the Card for May.

Last on the Card Has a Night Out

Yesterday evening we went along to a fabulous piece of theatre at a neighbouring village – the wonderfully named Grewelthorpe. What we saw was a one woman show. Devised, written and performed by Jenny Lockyer, an enthusiastic audience learnt all about the early life of aviator Amy Johnson, and about her astonishing solo flight in 1930 from England to Australia in an open cockpit Gypsy Moth bi-plane whom she called Jason, and who had (voiced by her) a role in the play. English readers – if Amy Johnson: Last Flight Out comes to a community centre or theatre near you, seize the opportunity to go and see it.

Waiting for the performance to begin, I took this indifferent snap of the audience, their shadows projected onto the stage beyond.

For Brian’s Last on the Card.

The featured image of Amy Johnson is in the public domain.

‘Rain, Rain, Go to Spain!’ – Last on the Card

We’re back in England after our three weeks with the Spanish branch of the family. Identikit weather, in Spain, travelling back through France and here in the UK. Wet. Rather cold.

As my last two photos of the month show. Here we are driving through France …

That’s a shot from my phone. My camera tells a similar story. Our last afternoon in France was in Caen, where it was largely … raining. As the sun set, the rain went briefly away, so here’s sundown over a street busy with its late-in-the-day market.

For Brian’s Last on the Card.

Gull as Sentry

Spotted in Chichester on a car roof. This officious looking herring gull stayed there for simply ages.

My computer is extremely poorly and our techie support shop has taken an extended Christmas break – and why not? It explains my absence from the blogosphere and my somewhat cursory response to comments. Normal service may be resumed one day. Meanwhile – Happy New Year to all fellow-bloggers and all of you who read my blog. Thank you for being such a supportive community and great company.

Brian’s Last on the Card

Last on the Card in November

Last on the phone, actually. Taken in a little backwater in Darlington, a town not too far from us that we’d never visited. I wish I could have stepped further back in this narrow alley. Then I’d have snapped four differently-coloured doors.

For Brian’s Last on the Card.

Breakfast Time for a Heron

Walking through the orchard at Fountains Abbey early yesterday, I came upon this heron, not 10 feet away. He was unconcerned about me, and spent his time alert for a breakfast meal. He found three courses during the time I watched him – about 20 minutes. This video shows him enjoying just one of them.

A heron out hunting along the river bank for breakfast.

It’s my last (and first) video of the month. My last shot of the month is also one of the heron, and is my featured photo. I was quite fed up that I only had my bargain-basement phone with me, rather than my camera. Never mind.

For Brian’s Last on the Card

… and IJK’s Bird of the Week.

Community Reds

I had various Red Images jostling for position on this last day of #SimplyRed. But yesterday, enjoying a cup of coffee with friends in our village’s Community Garden, I realised that what I want to celebrate today is … Community. Specifically the one that Becky has built up, in which the Squarers in particular have the chance to visit old friends and make new ones, and just generally enjoy the world-wide connections that blogging brings to our lives. Thank you Becky. Here are some flowers from our Community Garden. Very few, unfortunately, are red. So I’ve squeezed a clump of pink ones in as well.

Also, probably the first entry of the end of the month for Brian’s Last on the Card.

A Last Memory From France

Some of you have been following my adventures in Spain and France throughout January. Here is Positively the Last Memory. This is a shot taken aboard MV Armorique as she set out from Saint-Malo for Portsmouth in driving rain and winds of getting on for 50 mph. I can’t imagine how it was that this miserable matelot survived intact. But she did. Perhaps because at midnight, the wind suddenly dropped.

And actually, did I ever post my first shot of the holiday, waiting in line at Folkestone to get to France via the Channel Tunnel?

Rain then too. Luckily, the rain did the opposite of what the English children’s rhyme demands, and stayed resolutely away from Spain the whole time we were there.

For Brian’s Last on the Card.

My last photo on my phone this month was taken a few days ago. Chipping Sodbury’s shopkeepers were celebrating Hallowe’en Big Time. And then we spotted the post box. It seems the cats and kittens were celebrating too. Perhaps I can get away with showing my next-to-last photo too: the baker’s shop window.

For Brian’s Last on the Card.